Mac Mini Audio Issues

macrumors newbie

I use my mac mini as a media server, it hosts my iTunes and also runs Eye TV. It's not the latest mac mini (it's the old shape, about a year old) it was bought just before the refresh.

Yesterday all was fine but today I went to watch tv and could get no sound through Eye TV. Tried lots of different channels and found that the HD channels worked and I could hear the audio. Any SD channels have no audio.

I run sound through my 5.1 amp via optical lead, my first thought was a dodgy connection, but all was fine and a I can get some audio. Now I know that BBC channels broadcast Dolby digital sound, so if I can hear those its the stereo that's not getting through to amp?

So I did some testing...

I first tried iTunes, and again songs are playing with no sound. Tried Movies, and got no sound playing movies with stereo track but got sound playing surround track. Next tried VLC and same thing. Movie files with surround track play, but no sound with stereo track selected.

Tried unplugging the optical lead from the back of the mac and playing audio and could hear any sound played through the little speaker.

So I'm puzzled...? I've had issues with stereo working and issues with getting 5.1 working, but not the other way round.

I did the obvious restart and it did solve the issue temporarily but issue has returned. The only thing I've done to the mac is updated to 10.6.8 this morning, so assuming that's the cause, but what's the fix?

macrumors newbie

Same thing happened to me a couple days ago, the update has screwed my mini,s optical out , only way to get it back is a restart , an that only works temp,
Lots of others are suffering the same thing :-(

I had to use a 3.5mm jack to RCA , to my A/V Amp in the mean time , not happy , but it,ll have to do until they fix it
Or , i,ll have to Re Install , up to 10.6.7

macrumors 65816

Anyone know if Apple has acknowledged this yet. Mine was fine in 10.6.7, but doesn't work in Lion. Also, My Time Machine backup is not readable since my NAS firmware is not compatible with Lion. I use my Mac Mini as my Media server to stream my music to my HT setup over optical due to distance. USB audio works fine, but a 30+ distance over USB is not recommended.

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